Magic Lantern slides

Magic Lantern slides

Some sharp-eyed magic lantern ephemera collectors have noticed that the 5″x4″ transparencies we produce from digital files might very well be handy to reproduce lantern slides.

And indeed they would be correct.

Useful for duplicating valuable original slides or restoration of damaged slides, the process is reasonably easy, especially for British standard 3¼” x 3¼” and American standard 3¼” x 4″ slides.

Firstly, you need to create a digital copy of the lantern slide and it is perhaps easiest with a flat bed scanner that has a large format transparency scanning capability, such as the Epson Perfection V700 or V800 series of scanners.

The sharpest scanning area is central on the width, so don’t place the plate in the corner like you would do with a piece of A4 paper.

If you are going to be scanning several slides then you might like to make a cardboard mask to make positioning quick and accurate. This card mask saves time making repeated preview scans – fix your settings and simply swap originals and hit the scan button – and also blocks extraneous light which can degrade image contrast.

The scanning settings can often be infuriatingly obtuse – the final scan need to be something in the order of 6,000 pixels square.

The simple way is to set your scanner at 1800 or 2400dpi and do a preview, adjusting the scanning area to your slide.

It is important that you include the whole lantern slide glass area (not just the image), and a bit more.

Once you have made the scan you can do your image repair or tone/colour correction.

Make sure that the edges of the original lantern slide glass can be seen – although we will crop this excess off, we use this as reference to scale to an accurate 3¼” x 3¼”.

Sorry, free packs only sent to UK and EU addresses due to high international shipping costs.

Scanning old slides to CD

Sorry, we ONLY go from digital to film, not the other way around. So if you are wanting your slide collection scanned onto CD or DVD to view on your TV or computer then we can't help you. These guys can though: www.slidesoncd.co.uk